Introduction
The purpose of the blog is to reassert the civic and communitarian tradition of left-liberal thought, with an emphasis on democracy and social justice. It seeks, within this broad, noble and radical tradition, to articulate fresh thinking on the grave political, economic, constitutional and social issues of our time.
The impetus for this blog was provided by the rightwards, regressive lurch of the UK Liberal Democrats under Nick Clegg and the “Orange Bookers”. This rightwards shift, amounting to an uncritical embrace of neo-liberal globalisation, public choice theory, and amoral capitalism, is a disaster for the country. Left-liberals need to formulate a clear and defiant response to this situation, to look again at the prospects for a “Progressive Alliance” on the centre-left of politics, and to develop a constrasting narrative which critiques market fundamentalism in the name of humane, civic and social values.
What is “Left-Liberalism”?
“Left-liberalism” is liberalism in the American sense of the word, following the “New Liberal”, or “Social Liberal”, tradition. Left-Liberalism is closely associated with both the Progressive movement and the New Deal. It is characterised by a positive, civic and communal view of freedom, which recognises the democratic State not merely as a guarantor of abstract personal liberties, but as a participatory civic community, through which we can achieve social justice, tackle oppression and inequality, and promote the common good.
In practical terms, this means making a commitment to the restraint of capitalism’s excesses, to the limitation of corporate and monopoly power, to environmental and consumer protection regulations, and to high quality public services. It also means the reduction of gross inequalities through redistribution and social welfare provision.
Left-Liberalism -vs- Right-Liberalism
In much of Europe, the word “liberalism” is generally associated with the economic right: it means possessive individualism and free-market fundamentalism: “laissez faire” and “enrichissez-vous“. This form of “right-liberalism”, or “neo-liberalism”, is the hegemonic ideology of our times, and the source of many of our present discontents. Although left-liberalism and right-liberalism share, in part, a common origin in the struggle against the monarchical absolutism of the ancien regime, and a common belief in the freedom of the individual from oppression, American-usage “left-liberalism” and European-usage “right-liberalism” are in fact different, opposing, and irreconcilable, schools of thought.
The Values of Left-Liberalism
Liberalism, in the eyes of its many critics, has become synonymous with the “permissive society”, and with a shallow, individualist, infantile culture which crowds out all notions of ethics, virtue, duty and excellence. This is, indeed, a characteristic of right-liberalism, which invites us all to become rational-egoists, allures us with “greed is good”, and knows no value besides the bottom-line. Left-liberalism, however, must specifically reject the amoral and rational-egoist foundations of capitalism: instead, it offers a compelling vision of the good society, one which operates on a human scale, is rooted in a Christian narrative of redemption, and sustained by a civic democratic culture. Left-liberalism rejects all that is mechanical, brutal, depersonalised and alienating, and embraces the fullness of our humanity as social and creative beings.
Left-Liberalism and Socialism
This emphasis on civic and humane values, as well as a concern for diversity and localism, leads left-liberals to reject socialism as an attractive alternative. Socialism, at least in the usual sense of the State ownership and control of production, leads to the very concentrations of power, and potential for alienation, domination and depersonalisation, to which left-liberals object. It tries to be too rational, too centralised, too materialistic, and treats people as passive members of a mass, to be served, but also to be controlled, marshalled and directed. That said, there are forms of mutualist socialism and Christian socialism with which left-liberalism has greater affinity and can find common ground.
Although both left-liberalism and socialism are ideological traditions of the left, left-liberals believe, unlike hard-core socialists, that private property is a good thing: so good, in fact, that it should be shared as widely as possible. This leads them to prefer distributist rather than collectivist solutions: homesteads, not collective farms; progressive inheritance tax, not confiscation. Left-liberals also recognise private enterprise as the normal and default mode of production, with state ownership required only where a clear public interest so demands.
So why “New” Left-Liberal?
This blog is launched to coincide with the one hundredth anniversary of the publication of Liberalism (Hobhouse, 1911), arguably the foremost ideological tract of left-liberalism in the twentieth century. It’s now time to take stock and look to the future. The principles which motivate left-liberalism might be similar, but the circumstances and priorities have, in many cases, changed. This website therefore seeks to identify ways in which a left-liberal tradition can respond, both philosophically in in terms of policy proposals, to those changes.
The intention is not to slavishly follow Hobhouse, or anyone else, in specific policy prescriptions; rather, it is: (1) to recover the ethical and philosophical roots of the left-liberal tradition; (2) to develop from these roots a humane and ethical response to the political, economic, ethical and cultural crisis of the contemporary West; (3) to broaden and augment the left-liberal tradition in the light of critiques and contributions made by civic-republican, ecologist, and Christian Democratic thought; and (4) to defend the left-liberal tradition and the “social-market” economic model against the narrow individualism and dehumanising market-fundamentalism of the right.
